Cities | Reported by Harsha Kumari Singh | Updated: May 10, 2016 10:06 IST
Keshav Meena, a farmer's son, had been studying at a coaching institute in Kota for the past three years.
KOTA:
HIGHLIGHTS
- Poor performance in NEET suspected to be reason for 17-year-old's suicide
- Keshav Meena had spent the last 3 years studying at a coaching institute
- This is the fifth suicide by a student in Kota this year
Two more suicides have been reported in Rajasthan's Kota, the students' coaching hub that has made headlines for deaths linked to the immense pressure of doing well in exams.
17-year-old Keshav Meena, the son of a farmer, hanged himself at his hostel on Saturday night. He had studied at a coaching institute for three years and had sat for his medical entrance exam on May 1, the police said.
No suicide note was found in his room.
The police suspect he was upset about his performance in the medical entrance exam or NEET.
Another boy died on Saturday. He was a final year student of B.Tech and had taken poison on Thursday.
Last month, a 17-year-old girl jumped off a fifth floor flat in the city a day after learning that she had cleared the IIT entrance exam. The teen didn't want to study engineering, the police found during investigations.
There have been six suicides this year in the small desert town, nearly 250 km from Jaipur, which offers a range of coaching institutes to prep students for the IIT and medical entrance exams.
A senior administration official, Collector Ravi Kumar Surpur, sent a letter last week to the parents of the 1.5 lakh students who are enrolled for coaching in Kota, urging them "not to force their expectations and dreams on their children". In his five-page letter, he wrote, "Let them do what they want and are able to do".
Seventeen students taking coaching committed suicide last year, after which guidelines to coaching institutes to check such deaths were initiated.
The district administration has also decided to ask students to share feedback on the main causes of their stress, and how they usually cope with it. Officials have also met with those running coaching institutes for discussions on how to ensure the mental and emotional equilibrium of students.
